"He was the missing piece," Steves said. "It was fantastic. To hear someone that can perform it like Sean, it's just real exciting. You catch yourself in moments going, 'This really sounds like the real thing.' "

"It was one of those things that was meant to be," Finch said. "I'm not a big believer in fate, but it certainly seemed to have had a hand here."

"I think the greatest era of music is the late '60s through the early '80s, before hair bands took over everything and it became too commercial," he said.

"I always took pride in liking things that were obscure for my generation. My dad (Brad Finch) and I, that's how we sort of communicated. If we couldn't talk about anything else, we could talk about music."

Remarkably, Finch knew almost the entire Led Zeppelin catalog by heart. He didn't have to study it. And he sings all of it in natural voice - no falsetto.

He's intimately familiar with about 140 songs - from hammer of the gods rockers to the complicated, pastoral acoustic obscurities.

"As far as learning how to sing like Robert Plant, I think it's one of those things you can either do it or you can't," Finch said. "But I felt a connection with his style, being very sensual. Even the stuff that's more rock oriented, it still has an undulating blues theme to it. It's very sexual.

"It's in your face whether you like it or not. There's a lot of moaning, really experimenting with what sounds he could get out of his body. Everything is sexually driven."

That's quite a contrast from his conservative, button-down business style running his own company, Energy Management Group, with his brother, Shayne. They convert commercial buildings to "going green" structures.

Onstage, it's old-school.

For Zep fans who can't make it on Thursday, Mothership plays Texas Pride Barbecue on June 30 and the Broadway 5050 on July 9. For more info, check out www.mother shiprocks.com.

So, just how good is Mothership onstage?

"I don't want to sound sacrilegious. But we feel like we are Zeppelin for a few minutes. That's when we know it works," Finch said.